


Coming Home

by Corvid_Knight, NKMLN



Series: Earth C Shenanigans [13]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Collab, Earth C, F/M, M/M, Post-Sburb, Reunions, holy shit, i may have cried editing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 07:55:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14869757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight, https://archiveofourown.org/users/NKMLN/pseuds/NKMLN
Summary: Jade calls John over for a special new arrival on Earth C.This is another collaboration withninja-kitty-more-like-no! She wrote, I edited and expanded!





	Coming Home

The wind picks up a little and ruffles your hair up, and you automatically reach out with your Breath powers to keep the breeze relatively calm. Not that you really need to—it can't _actually_ blow you off the roof, and even if it did, your godtier powers would save you from hitting the ground. 

But you won't fall. You're good, right now. 

(Not really.) 

You huff out a sigh and stare up at the five-AM darkness of the sky above you. It's that dumb interval when the stars are gone but the sunrise hasn't started coloring the horizon; the time when there's no real reason to be out, in other words. Before the game, you wouldn't have snuck out in this time window—earlier, yes, you loved the not-really-there danger of hauling yourself out the window to look at the stars and chat with Dave, listening for your dad and keeping as quiet as you could so you wouldn't get caught—but stuff's different now. 

So much is different. 

Inside, you can sleep, but not easily. Not comfortably. Even lying there against Dirk, you can feel the flow of the air breaking, feel it tangle up in baffled desperation (no, you can't, that's you projecting how you yourself feel onto it), feel the stagnation to the point where you jerk awake gasping and clawing at the sheets, still caught in dreams of caves and being buried and walls slowly closing in around you to crush the breath from your lungs. 

Those dreams are still better than the others, though.

_An overturned table. Wine and blood eddying together on the ground, little darker and brighter pools mixing into a mess that'll never come out. Pain in your chest, your back, your_ heart _, ripping you apart—_

You breathe deep, taking in air that doesn't taste like that faraway battlefield, and force your mind to center on where and when you are. Tapping your fingertips on the roof, feeling concrete instead of shingles, helps a little. 

After a moment of that you sit up. 

God, you're so tired. 

You stand up, stretching a little—you'll go back inside, you guess, back to Dirk, maybe leave the window open in the hopes that it'll help a little (it never does)—and then your phone buzzes with an incoming text. 

And buzzes again.

And again. 

It doesn't stop at all as you fumble it out of your pocket and saying at the screen to see who the hell wants to talk to you at five in the morning. The answer is Jade. Of course it is.

Five texts in under a minute. 

What. The. Hell. 

GG: john?  
GG: john!  
GG: did you really start turning your ringer off at night? this is the WORST possible time to decide to do that! >:(  
GG: this is IMPORTANT and you need to pick up the phone!  
GG: are you really going to make me text dirk to wake you up? pick up your phone!!

EB: Jade, its five in the morning? why are you even up, let alone waking me up?

GG: oh good you're up! you need to come over.

EB: now?

GG: yes, now! it's IMPORTANT!!!!!!

EB: do i get to know what it is.

GG: nope! because it is also a surprise!

EB: its also five in the morning, jade. do you get that part?  
EB: five. o clock. in the morning.

GG: yes but were you really asleep??

You groan softly and bonk yourself in the forehead with the heel of your hand. She knows you too well. 

When you look down she's already sent another text. 

GG: come ON john this is so important!

EB: ugh fine i'll be there soon

After a moment's consideration, you opt to not use the transportalizer. It'll wake your boyfriend if you do, and he needs to sleep almost as much as you do. Besides, you're still feeling restless and almost caged—let's face it, you weren't going to sleep tonight even if Jade hadn't messaged you. 

So you utilize your other powers, floating a few inches up off the roof so you can drift out and down, beginning the short trip to Jade.

* * *

You alight gently in her yard a few minutes later, careful not to land in any "projects." Even if you didn't smash something—which someone's already done; there's a hole in one of the white hybrid pumpkins to your left and a trail of its disgusting guts leading towards the door—it's not all that fun to land in fertilizer. 

Carefully giving the broken pumpkin a wide berth and just as carefully not stepping directly in the slime-and-seed trail, you head up to said door and knock quietly. 

Jade opens it before you have time to pull your hand back, ears pricked forward and fail wagging in excitement. "What took you so long?" she scolds, darting back to the kitchen as you take a reluctant step into the front hall. 

"Sorry, I couldn't—I didn't want to—if I used the transportalizer, Dirk—" You stumble verbally and physically, trying not to lose your balance as the soft, ever-present echo of the wind in your head abruptly picks up into an almost-roar for a second. 

Before you can finish, Jade comes back, pushing a warm mug of what smells like soup but looks like it has less solids in it into your hands. "Gotcha. Drink that." You do, almost choking as you scald your tongue, and Jade pushes her glasses up a little and keeps talking. "Look, I know you're not into the welcoming committee thing—which is fine! You don't have to, the rest of us can handle it—but _this_ time is special!" 

You swallow down a mouthful of the hot liquid—ow, but at least you're more awake—and set the mug down on a nearby table. "You called me over here for somebody from earth? Come on, Jade..." 

"Shush," she says, not answering your question at all, and takes your arm, gently propelling you towards the kitchen. "He's pretty tired, so you should see him and then maybe let some rest. And get some yourself, too—you look pretty bad...anyway. He's waiting." 

This has still not told you _who_ is waiting, but you guess you can just walk through and see for yourself. Which you do. 

The man sitting at the table is leaning over, trying to clean pumpkin guts off his show with paper towels and having almost no success. You can't see his face, but you don't have to; he's still wearing the white fedora that you _know_ should logically be lost to some construct of the game, the same white shirt that you remember being stained with red, the same tie fixed so the knot's perfectly symmetrical, smaller and neaterr than you could ever get it. 

When he looks up at you, your heart stammers to a stop. 

He blinks a few times. Smiles uncertainly. Says, "My apologies, but do I...do I know you from somewhere?" 

The words won't come. The tears won't come. You stand there, gaping like a fish pulled out of water (and breathing just as efficiently) for what seems like forever before you pull in a ragged breath and get one word out, just barely. You don't know if he can even hear you.

"Dad?" 

He just stares for a second, searching your face as his lips press together. In that second your eyes _do_ start to fill, tears threatening to spill down your face—what if you're wrong? What if this is like when you met Jane's dad, what if the reason he doesn't known your face is because he's never seen you before, what if—

"John?" he says, your _father_ says, and " _John,_ " and he stands up and you take the few steps that separate you from him—maybe you fly, you might fly, you feel like you fly—and you're cradled against him before you know what's happened, choking out little sobs as you hold onto him. 

"When did you get so _big_?" he asks, and there's so much genuine bafflement in the question that you laugh. It hurts to laugh around the tears, but in a good way. 

"Dad—" There's words behind the one word, but your voice cracks on it. You don't know when the last time that happened was.

"I'm here." 

"Dad—I—" You missed him so much. You didn't even know how much, but now it's all coming down on you in one devastating wave, and all you can do is cry into his shirt like you're thirteen again. "I missed—I missed you so much," you force out around the lump in your throat, and is he crying too? "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I screwed up, I let—I got you—" 

You can't say it. You choke on the word, pressing your face into his chest so he doesn't see how you're unable to admit your worst failing in the whole goddamn mess. 

"I'm here now, John." He's still speaking in your ear, holding you tight as you shake near-silently against him. "John. Son, look at me. I'm here, look at me." 

After a moment you do, as well as you can. And he meets your eyes, smiles at you even though his face isn't exactly dry now either, and says quietly, "I am so proud of you." 

You break. You cling to him and sob against him, and he keeps saying it to you, telling you he's so, so proud. You're not twenty, you're not thirteen, you are somewhere outside your whole life. You've been falling for years, and your feet are finally touching the ground again. You can hear Jade talking on the phone, muffled because she's in the next room—she's talking to Dirk, isn't she? Oh, god, Dirk, you're going to get to introduce your dad to him, because he's _here_. You're going to get to explain that you're gay, too, or at least not straight, tell him that that's your boyfriend, and that's still frightening even though you know it shouldn't be, but right now that doesn't matter. 

He's here. 

You're safe. 

He's _here_. 

Your heart feels whole again.

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel is now up [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14894844)!


End file.
